The European Central Bank has dropped Citigroup from its experts’ working group on foreign exchange, days after the US bank was fined by US and UK regulators for failing to stop traders from trying to manipulate the currency market.
The ECB declined to comment on this aspect, saying only that the change in the list of members was part of an ongoing annual review of the foreign exchange contact group. A spokesman for Citi in London declined to comment. Citi, the world’s biggest foreign exchange bank, was one of six banks fined a total of $4.3 billion last week for failing to have adequate systems and controls in place to prevent traders from manipulating, front running and rigging benchmark currency rates.
The ECB has several working groups that consist of experts from the ECB and commercial banks through which it keeps in touch with the debt, FX and money markets to discuss developments and to monitor and exchange views. In the latest participants’ list for its contact group dated November 2014, Citigroup has been dropped. None of the other five banks fined last week are part of the group. Citi’s fines last week totalled $1.018 billion, made up of $358 million to Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), $310 million to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and $350 million to the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).
Source: Reuters